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The “Army of God” (AOG), an underground anti-abortion extremist group, forms, according to government documents. The Army of God advocates violence towards abortion providers and clinics, and will even recommend murder and assassination of abortion providers (see Early 1980s); later it will also advocate violence against homosexuals in order to end what it calls the “homosexual agenda.” Current and future leaders and prominent members will include Don Benny Anderson (see August 1982), Michael Bray (see September 1994), James Kopp (see October 23, 1998), Neal Horsley (see January 1997), and Eric Robert Rudolph (see January 29, 1998). It is unclear how large the group is. The group advocates “whatever means are necessary” to stop abortions, which it calls “baby-killing.” According to government documents, the AOG manual “explicitly states that this is a ‘real’ army, with the stated mission of choosing violent means both to permanently end the ability of medical personnel to perform abortions and to draw media attention to their opposition to women’s right to choose to have abortions.” The AOG advocates the use of glue, acid, firebombs, and explosives against clinics and clinic personnel, and later advocates shooting abortion providers and clinic staff. A government document says, “It is explicitly stated in the manual that violence is the preferred means to the desired end, and there are references to ‘execution’ of abortion clinic staff.” The manual states that the local members of the Army of God are not told of the identities of other members, in order to make certain that “the feds will never stop us.” AOG documents will also threaten the US government and the United Nations, calling the UN an “ungodly Communist regime” supported by its “legislative-bureaucratic lackeys in Washington.” A letter apparently written by AOG leader Donald Spitz will claim of the US government and the UN: “It is you who are responsible and preside over the murder of children and issue the policy of ungodly perversion that’s destroying our people.… Death to the New World Order.” The AOG will openly declare itself a terrorist organization in responses to media articles. It will maintain that a state of undeclared war has existed in the US since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion (see January 22, 1973), and it carries out terrorist attacks against abortion clinics and providers in order to “defend God’s children” against state-sponsored “slaughter.” The AOG will repeatedly state that it intends to continue its violent, deadly attacks against abortion clinics and providers until all laws legalizing abortion are repealed. After 2001, the AOG will begin rhetorically attacking homosexuals as well as abortion providers (see 2002). It will also proclaim its solidarity with Muslim extremist groups over such incidents as the September 11 attacks. AOG members will publicly profess their enthusiasm for mounting chemical and biological attacks. [Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006]

The American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), an organization of anti-abortion advocates who called the 1993 murder of an abortion doctor “justifiable” (see March 10, 1993 and July 1993), launches a campaign it calls the “Deadly Dozen.” The ACLA releases Old West-style “unwanted” posters of 13 prominent abortion providers. Many of the posters include the providers’ work and home addresses. The targeted doctors say they are very aware that similar posters created by other anti-abortion organizations had preceded the murders of three of their colleagues, and call the campaign a “hit list.” The FBI offers protection to the 13 providers, and many of them begin wearing bulletproof vests and taking other security precautions. After the ACLA is named in a lawsuit to prevent it from publishing the material (see 1996), ACLA leaders give some of the “Deadly Dozen” data to Neal Horsley of Carrollton, Georgia, who posts the material on his “Nuremberg Files” Web site (see January 1997). The Web site names doctors and abortion rights supporters and calls for them to be tried for “crimes against humanity.” In later years, when an abortion provider is murdered, their name will appear on the site with a line through it. Horsley uses gray tape for the names of abortion providers or staff who have been wounded. The entire Web site is designed to look as if it is dripping in blood. [Ms. Magazine, 12/2002]

A screenshot of Neal Horsley’s ‘Nuremberg Files’ Web site, showing murdered doctors with their names lined out. [Source: MSNBC / Christian Gallery (.com)]Anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley posts a Web site he calls “The Nuremberg Files,” which lists the names, addresses, and phone numbers of some 200 abortion providers and clinic staff members. The site, sponsored by the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA—see 1995 and After), lists each person with one of three statuses: still working, wounded, or dead. Many observers and pro-choice activists will call the site a “hit list” targeting abortion providers for assassination (see October 23, 1998). [Kushner, 2003, pp. 40] Government documents also identify Horsley as a white supremacist and separatist, and the “webmaster” for the secessionist organization “Republic of Texas.” [Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006] In a 2001 documentary on the “Army of God,” an organization to which Horsley belongs (see 1982 and March 30, 2001), Horsley discusses his site’s treatment of murdered abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian (see October 23, 1998). Horsley will explain why, within hours of Slepian’s murder, the site depicts Slepian’s name with a line drawn through it: “Names in black are people who are working. The grayed-out names are people who have been wounded. And the strike-throughs, like Dr. Slepian, are people who have been killed. When I drew a line through his name, I said: ‘See, I told ya. There’s another one. How many more is it gonna take?’ The evidence is at hand. There are people out there who [will] go out and blow their brains out.” [Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]

James Kopp. [Source: Women's eNews (.org)]Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician in Buffalo, New York, who performs abortions, is shot to death in his kitchen, by a bullet that enters through the window of his Amherst, New York, home. His wife and one of his four children witness his murder. Anti-abortion advocate James Kopp shoots Slepian with a high-powered rifle. Kopp uses the pseudonym “Clive Swenson,” and is well known under that name in a Jersey City, New Jersey, Catholic congregation. Militant anti-abortionists call him “Atomic Dog.” It will take the FBI over two years to find Kopp, who will be arrested in France (see March 29, 2001). Kopp, who apparently was drawn to anti-abortion protests in the 1970s after his girlfriend had an abortion, has been active in anti-abortion protests for decades and joined Randall Terry’s Operation Rescue in 1986. It is also believed he joined the violent anti-abortion organization “Army of God” in 1988 (see 1982), as well as the “Lambs of God,” a Catholic anti-abortion group whose leader has characterized the anti-abortion movement as a “war between God and Satan.” Kopp is well known for designing intricate locks that anti-abortion protesters use to lock the doors to women’s health care clinics. Slepian has been listed as a “wanted” abortion provider on the anti-abortion Web site “Nuremberg Files,” which The Guardian will describe as “a virtual hit list of doctors who carry out abortions” (see January 1997). Within hours of his murder, Slepian’s name is reposted on the site, this time with a line drawn through it. [Washington Post, 1998; Womens eNews, 3/30/2001; Guardian, 4/1/2001; National Abortion Federation, 2010] By early November, Kopp will be named as a suspect in the murder, though he will not be formally charged until May 1999. He will be placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list in June 1999. [National Abortion Federation, 2010] In 2002, Kopp will confess to the murder (see November 21, 2002). He will be found guilty a year later (see March 17-18, 2003).

DVD cover illustration of the film ‘Soldiers in the Army of God.’ [Source: HBO / St. Pete for Peace]Cable movie provider HBO airs a documentary, Soldiers in the Army of God, focusing on the violent anti-abortion movement (see 1982, Early 1980s, August 1982, and July 1988) and three of its leaders. National Public Radio airs a profile of the documentary, featuring an interview with the film’s producers, Marc Levin, Daphne Pinkerson, and Daniel Voll. According to Voll, the film focuses on three members of the “Army of God”: young recruit Jonathan O’Toole, who says he was looking for the most “radical” and “terroristic” anti-abortion group he could find; Neal Horsley, who runs an anti-abortion Web site; and long-haul trucker Bob Lokey, who recruits new members. 'Violent Fringe' of Anti-Abortion Opposition - Voll describes the three as part of the “violent fringe” of anti-abortion opposition: “These are the guys on the ground who are—whatever the words that politicians and other leaders of these cultural wars can put out there, these are the men who hear them and feel emboldened by them, who feel encouraged by each other, and they are every day praying for God’s will in their life.” Another unidentified man says: “Anybody who raises a weapon up against these people who are slaughtering these babies, before God and the entire world, right now I say you are doing God’s own work. And may the power of God be with you as you aim that rifle. You’re squeezing that trigger for Almighty God.” In the documentary, an unidentified anti-abortion activist says: “There are people in this world right now who are looking for directions on what do we do. Well, we end abortion on demand by the most direct means available to us. So stop the abortion with a bullet, if that’s what it takes. Stop it with a bomb, if that’ s what it takes. You stop abortion on demand. Don’t let it go any farther.” O’Toole says that the “next step is to arm ourselves in a militia, a real militia that has the power to resist the federal government.” Pinkerson says that O’Toole, who was 19 when he joined the Army of God, found Horsley on the Internet through Horsley’s Web site, “The Nuremberg Files,” which lists doctors who perform abortions (see January 1997). O’Toole became Horsley’s assistant, and through him met Lokey, who runs a Web site called “Save the Babies.” In the film, O’Toole, whom the producers speculate may eventually become an assassin of abortion providers, says that because of America’s legalization of abortion, the country has become like “Nazi Germany. It’s like you’ve got concentration camps around you.” Levin notes that filmed conversations between Horsley and Lokey show that many in the movement feel threatened by the concept of women’s equality, and blame men’s failure to exert “dominion” over women as part of the reason why the US legalized abortion. [National Public Radio, 3/30/2001; Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]Opposition to Homosexuality - Horsley draws a connection between the organization’s opposition to abortion and the American citizenry’s supposed opposition to homosexuality, saying: “If the American people woke up, and realized that they had to choose between legalized abortion, legalized homosexuality, and legalized all the rest of the desecration or civil war which would cause the rivers to run red with blood—hey, you know we will see legalized abortion go like that! We’ll see legalized homosexuality go like that! Because the American people are not willing to die for homosexuals.” Bringing Bomb-Making Materials to Washington - The film also shows Lokey bragging to convicted clinic bomber Michael Bray (see September 1994) that he has just trucked 45,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a substance that can be used to make “fertilizer bombs” similar to the one that destroyed an Oklahoma City federal building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), into Washington, DC. Anti-Abortion Opposition Part of an 'Apocalyptic' Death Struggle - Author and reporter Frederick Clarkson writes: “At once shocking, compelling, and beautifully made, the film is essentially the national television debut for the aboveground spokesmen and spokeswomen of the Army of God.… Horsley and others are quite clear in their public statements and their writings that the attacks on clinics and the murders of doctors are but warning shots in what they envision as an epochal, even an apocalyptic struggle at hand. Either Americans conform to their view of God’s laws, or there will be a blood bath, they say. And there is no evidence that they are anything but dead serious.” [Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]

Mark Crutcher. [Source: Life Dynamics]Members of the anti-abortion organization Life Dynamics call Planned Parenthood clinics in 49 states, pretending to be teenaged girls pregnant by older men, and use the clinics’ promises of confidentiality to accuse them of covering up sexual abuse. The group secretly records telephone conversations with some 800 receptionists and staff members, and then uses selectively edited snippets of the taped conversations in a national publicity campaign against Planned Parenthood. The intent of the organization is to discredit Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, and to encourage lawsuits against them, according to information published on the organization’s Web site. Life Dynamics, based in Denton, Texas, claims that the tapes are “evidence” that Planned Parenthood and other women’s clinics are complicit in child sex abuse. The organization’s founder, Mark Crutcher, releases a report called “Child Predators,” which is picked up by, among other news outlets, Newsday and Fox News. The organization’s evidence fails to hold up under scrutiny by law enforcement officials and media outlets, and pro-choice attorneys and advocates raise questions about the legality of Life Dynamics’s tactics. The organization bills itself as a “political marketing agency” whose stated goal is to prevent women from obtaining abortions, even if they are legally entitled to them. Crutcher and the group have previously attempted to claim that abortions cause breast cancer, and that Planned Parenthood trafficked in human body parts; both claims have been solidly debunked. Roger Evans of Planned Parenthood notes: “No one has an obligation to report or to conduct an inquisition based on a phone call, because you have no idea who is on the other end and what the truth is. And in this case, [the] Life Dynamics hoax caller was scrupulously careful not to give a name.” He goes on to say that law enforcement officials who have investigated the Life Dynamics charges “have been satisfied that people are conscientiously complying with the law as it’s written, and that people are reporting when kids are in danger.” Life Dynamics denies that its covert recording of the conversations is a violation of any state or federal laws (though 13 states targeted by the organization have anti-wiretapping laws), and is working diligently to spread its story throughout the press, starting with right-wing advocacy groups. The magazine Citizen, published by James Dobson’s Christian group Focus on the Family, says in a cover story that the tapes will “bring down Planned Parenthood.” And Neal Horsley’s far-right Nuremberg Files Web site features a story by Massachusetts attorney Greg Hession that outlines a strategy for “pro-life attorneys” to pursue in filing criminal and civil charges against Planned Parenthood. [Womens ENEws, 11/10/2002] (Horsley is an acknowledged advocate for the murder of abortion providers—see January 1997.) [Feminist Women's Health Center News, 2010] Evans says that if Life Dynamics achieves its stated objective of forcing medical providers to report all instances of teenagers’ sexual activity, “The system would be deluged,” and, in the absence of confidentiality, he predicts “teenagers would stop coming in.” [Womens ENEws, 11/10/2002]

A federal appeals court in San Francisco rules that anti-abortion organizations who engage in the practice of distributing posters targeting abortion providers (see 1995 and After) are illegally threatening the lives and well-being of the people they are targeting. The 6-5 verdict also rules that Web sites such as The Nuremberg Files (see January 1997), which list doctors’ names and addresses and “lines out” the names of those doctors who are murdered, also threaten the lives of the named doctors. The defendants unsuccessfully claimed they were engaging in constitutionally protected political advocacy; the plaintiffs—four doctors and two health clinics—argued that the speech in question encouraged violence against abortion providers. The verdict overturns a previous three-judge ruling by the same court and reinstates a $109 million award for the plaintiffs. Writing for the majority, Judge Pamela Ann Rymer states: “While advocating violence is protected, threatening a person with violence is not.… This is not political hyperbole. They were a true threat.” Maria Vullo, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, says the essence of the decision is rejection of threatening speech. Of the “political advocacy” practiced by the defendants, Vullo says, “It’s really terrorism.” Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer for the defendants, says his clients will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. “This is a threat case without any identifiable threat,” he says. “We’re found liable for the format we chose.” [New York Times, 5/17/2002] In spite of the verdict, the practice will continue (see January - April 2003, Fall 2009, and September 13, 2010).

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